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'CHILD IS PUT FIRST'

RETIRED family court judge Sir Mark Hedley ruled in 2004 that premature baby Charlotte Wyatt should have her life-support machines turned off following a battle between doctors and her parents.

Yesterday, he explained the role of the court in such situations.

He said: “These cases happen from time to time. They are not common but they are not quite as rare as you might think.

“The reality is that no parent actually owns their child, in the sense that they can make unfettered decisions about it.

“We do have some limited accountability for families and one of them relates to end-of-life decision making.

“Who can blame a parent for wanting to go for everything there is?

“But there are always two sides to the argument and at the end of the day, where there is no agreement, then it’s a matter of judicial decision.

“The law is very, very simple – the court is simply required to act with the child’s best interests as its paramount consideration.

“And of course that is a massive value judgment.

“And of course there are elements of morality and so on involved in it.

“There are fundamental issues like, for example, as I said in the Charlotte Wyatt case, any philosophy of life that doesn’t have a proper place for death, which comes to us all, is an inadequate philosophy.

“And you simply have to be prepared to confront the fact that some children are going to die and that there will hardly ever be a parent who is a willing party to that.”

'COURT RUINED THREE LIVES'

RADIO presenter Nick Ferrari yesterday said the judge in Charlie’s case got it wrong.

Listeners heard how his family were told his own brother Simon would be a “vegetable” after a car crash as a teenager.

But his mother refused to allow his life support to be turned off – and after brain surgery Simon went on to live another 34 years.

Nick said: “Doctors do get it wrong. I had a phenomenally close relationship with my brother. Effectively, I helped him to walk again.

“I was nine, he was 17. I used to push him around in a wheelchair.”

He added that the judge had “wrecked three lives”.

He explained: “Barring an appeal, Charlie is not going to make it. But mum and dad will go to their graves always wondering, ‘What if? What if we’d been allowed?’.